Thursday, September 27, 2012

Will Upper Warren Get New Streetlights?

During the Urban Renewal era, when Warren Street was given what was meant to be a Williamsburg look, with brick sidewalks and streetlights that imitated colonial lanterns, the look stopped at Park Place. A few years ago, when the City installed the new street lamps, they once again did not extend beyond the Public Square. Now that there are both new and established businesses on the far side of the parkParlor, Wunderbar, the Crimson Sparrow, Wasabi, and (soon) Bonfiglio & Breadthere's an interest in embracing this stretch of Warren Street as part of the business district and replacing the cobra head streetlights with the lantern-like street lamps that grace the rest of the street.

Last night at the Public Works Committee meeting, DPW superintendent Rob Perry revealed that he had written $39,929 into his proposed budget for 2013 to purchase the bases, lamp poles, and conduit needed to replace the cobra head streetlights on upper Warren Street with the same street lamps found on the rest of Warren Street. (The luminaires are leased from National Grid.) Unfortunately, this amount is not sufficient to eliminate the utility poles, which was done for the rest of Warren Street more than thirty years ago, but it's a start. Perry reports that this budget item survived the initial review by the BEA (Board of Estimate and Apportionment). Let's hope it survives all subsequent reviews as well.

2 comments:

  1. Street lamps would be a great improvement in the long neglected 700 and 800 block. Half the time some of the existing lights don't work anyway and portions of the street are dark. So this is a great start, but please find the money to remove the ugly utility poles.

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  2. I never understood why that section of the main thoroughfare has always been ignored.
    It's the rest of Warren Street, not a side street.

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